Software and Configuration: The two 160GB drives are set up as an LVM RAID-1 array containing the OS and software. The remaining drives are set up as a RAID-Z2 ZFS array. Due to parity space loss and the fact that all disks in a RAID-Z array must be the same size, only 12TB out of the 24 TB is usable. The only acceptable alternative was to use mirrors, which would have cost me half the space anyway, so I went with the route that gave me more tolerable disk failures. Once I upgrade all of the disks to 4TB, the pool will expand and allow 24TB of usable space out of the 32TB total physical space..
Usage: This acts as a general file server, and a database server for Kodi, which my wife and I use from the media center and from our tablets. It also functions as an Owncloud server for my wife, several friends, and myself. When I'm in the mood to do so, it also acts as a web app test and development environment.
Backup: Critical files are backed up to Amazon glacier or Github. Everything else is expendable (ripped DVDs and such).
Additional info: For a time it ran off of a 16GB ssd that I took from an Acer chromebook, but it did not survive always-on operation in the long run. It currently contains 1.35 TB of ripped DVDs and BluRays re-encoded to h.265. I kept track of the pre and post-conversion sizes in a spreadsheet, because that the kind of thing I do: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tc1O7iDLTXQLhZSqI_WKDtLyPZ111BHGzFTV8CyOCxU/edit?pli=1#gid=0
SanMadJack got a reaction from alpenwasser in LTT Storage Rankings
